It seems both President Bush and Gov. Mike Rounds are polishing up their fiscal conservative credentials this year.

Bush threw down the gauntlet on earmarks in his last State of the Union speech when he demanded Congress rein in pork-barrel spending in the coming year. Unless a spending bill cuts in half the number and the cost of congressional earmarks - money that is slipped into a bill at the last minute for specific projects - he vowed to veto the legislation.

In his own State of the State address to the South Dakota Legislature, Rounds cautioned about the need to live within a budget. He has since chastised legislators, lobbyists, educators and others for wanting to increase expenditures or decrease revenues without recognizing the consequences of those choices for state government's bottom line. Rounds is frustrated by what he refers to as "spenders" and "bleeders," - those legislative proposals in the 2008 Legislature which create new entitlements or cut tax receipts - without regard for how the state will pay for those increased expenses or replace those lost revenues.

Whether it be to the supporters of higher education or the Highway Patrol, he rightly asks, "Who will stand up for the needs of the taxpayers?"

We applaud Rounds' concern for the taxpayer. As he notes, it is easy to make a case for the budget needs of a state agency or to stand up for the legitimate needs of a special interest group.

It is much harder to prioritize those needs within a balanced state budget.

Federal deficit spending makes earmarks, usually portrayed as wasteful spending on bridges to nowhere or shameless attempts to curry favor for incumbent Congress members, possible.

While that description is not always accurate or fair, we do share President Bush's dislike of earmarks, because it is impossible to sift the wasteful from the worthy in the current system.

We find it curious, however, that Bush didn't find his earmark backbone until his final year in office and after a sea of red ink in his administration's budgets. Roughly half of the 12,000 earmarks that were approved by Congress for fiscal year 2008 were sponsored by Republicans, many of those with support from the White House.

But no matter who's in charge in Washington, federal spending should be vetted by the agencies meant to supervise those expenditures, not handed out like candy by Congress.